Side hustles from your phone

13 Best Side Hustles From Your Phone (Top Side Hustle Apps!)

Presented byTom Blake Hours Fresh Since

These days, starting a new side hustle has never been easier thanks to the power of technology. In fact, all you need is a smartphone and the willingness to work and you're ready to make money.

Personally, I've been making money this way ever since my time in college. And since then, I've tested out dozens of money making apps and hustles to find the best ones.

So today, I'm sharing some ideas for starting a side hustle from your phone. If you want to boost your income while on the go or in your spare time, these phone jobs are the perfect place to start.

13 Best Side Hustles From Your Phone

1. Play Games For Money

If you enjoy playing games, then one fun phone side hustle you can try is to use apps that pay you for playing games.

There's actually a surprising number of legit cash games that pay you to download and play new games. And this is one way I've made money in the past by gaming during my lunch break or morning commute.

Some of my favorite game apps to win real money include:

Bubble Cash app

If you combine a lot of these apps together and stay consistent, you can easily make $20-$30 per month while having some fun.

Just note that this side hustle with your phone doesn't pay a lot. However, it's a fun side hustle that feels like earning passive income if you already spend time gaming.

2. Food Delivery Apps

Food delivery gigs are one of the best options if you value flexibility and want to earn a decent amount per hour.

Some of the most popular gig apps in the food delivery space include:

  • Uber Eats: Get paid to deliver food with an app that operates in over 6,000 cities.
  • DoorDash: The largest food delivery app in North America where you can deliver via bike, car, or scooter.
  • Instacart: Earn money delivering groceries and keep 100% of your tips
  • Shipt: Another popular grocery delivery gig like Instacart that operates in over 5,000 cities across America
  • Grubhub: Another food delivery gig like Uber Eats.

Uber-Eats

Depending on what city you’re in, you can even deliver for most of these gig delivery apps with a bike or scooter. And you manage every part of the delivery with an app to keep things simple.

These phone side hustles also pay you weekly for the deliveries you complete. And you also keep 100% of all the tips you make while earning money per delivery.

Start making money with Uber Eats and DoorDash!

3. Paid Survey Taker

I’ve been making money online with surveys since my early college days. And since many of the top companies have apps, it's an easy phone side hustle you can try while watching TV or on your commute.

Several leading survey apps include:

Branded Surveys website

Branded Surveys is where I'd start since it pays the most and is easy to use. But you can combine all of these get-paid-to sites to maximize your earnings.

4. Sell Stock Photos

Selling stock photos can be a great way to make money if you’re into taking photos with your smartphone camera. And this is especially true if you specialize in user-generated content and take videos and photos for brands instead of just selling nice photos.

Some of the best places to sell stock photos and videos include:

  • Foap (one of the best for using your phone)
  • Alamy
  • ClickASnap
  • Shutterstock
  • iStock
  • Getty Images
  • Pexels
  • 500px

But again, user-generated content (UGC) is really where the money is with this phone side hustle. And some people I know have made $10,000 from selling UGC content to brands and do it full-time now.

5. Use Odd Job Apps

Personally, I've made money with odd jobs like snow shoveling and landscaping before. But you can find plenty of other gigs like manual labor, food delivery, warehouse jobs, and retail work.

Some of the top odd job apps and platforms you can use to find gigs include:

  • Steady: Find local gig opportunities, gigs, and part-time jobs to make extra cash based on your skills and income goals.
  • Wonolo: This platform helps you find gigs like warehouse work and manual labor gigs.
  • Instawork: Another versatile on-demand job platform with plenty of same day pay jobs.
  • TaskRabbit: Get paid for odd jobs like assembling furniture, cleaning, handyman work, and more.
  • Oppizi: Earn over $20 an hour walking by delivering advertisements and flyers in local neighborhoods.

Oppizi

All of these money making apps find you opportunities and pay you directly through your phone. You also manage everything from client bookings and communication to listing your services with a mobile app, so the process is quite streamlined.

6. Sell Stuff Online

Nowadays, you can sell pretty much anything online. And there are a select few marketplaces that make selling from your phone super simple.

For example, retail arbitrage is a popular side hustle along with flipping things for money. Several of my friends do this by buying things like clothing or electronics and then reselling them online for a quick profit.

I've also made money by selling clothing, furniture, and guitars to people in my city. And in all of these instances, you can manage the entire sales process with various selling apps.

Some of my favorite selling apps you can use include:

  • Depop: Buy and sell clothing, jewelry, and beauty products to make a profit.
  • Poshmark: A popular app for reselling clothes, watches, sneakers, and other accessories.
  • Facebook Marketplace: One of the largest platforms to take photos and list any item online for quick cash.
  • OfferUp: An excellent Facebook Marketplace alternative with an easy-to-use mobile app.
  • Worthy: One of the best ways to sell jewelry, luxury watches, diamonds, and wedding rings.

Ultimately, there are so many local selling websites or online marketplaces you can use to get started.

7. Use Passive Income Apps

I've been using passive income apps for years to earn small amounts of money. And this is a super easy way to snag some free cash and gift cards. Some of my favorite apps you can use include:

Nielsen Computer Mobile Panel

Between these apps, making $100 to $200+ a year in free cash is quite simple. And again, this is a simple way to get paid for your data if you aren't right now.

8. Social Media Management

Are you well-versed in all social media platforms and enjoy content creation? If so, being a social media manager will be your favorite side hustle from your phone.

This is also hustle I'm pretty familiar with. Back in school, some of my friends and I made money by running social media and paid advertising for two local furniture companies.

A few common tasks for social media managers include:

  • Plan social media campaigns
  • Create engaging content
  • Interact with customers and users
  • Stay on top of trends
  • Analyze social media data
Social-media-manager-salary
Image courtesy of Payscale.

If you have a knack for digital marketing, this type of online job can become quite lucrative, and you manage a lot of posting and day-to-day tasks from your phone.

If you’ve managed to grow your own following on social media, you can use that as credentials to get started. Otherwise, a course or two on social media strategy might benefit you for getting clients.

9. Use Cash Back Apps

These days, there are dozens of reward apps that pay you to shop at popular brands. If you do most of the shopping for your household, this is an easy way to get money for free just for buying products you normally do.

Several cashback apps I use on a regular basis include:

  • Pogo: Earn PayPal money for connecting your credit card and shopping online.
  • Fetch Rewards: A grocery rewards app that lets you earn cashback in the form of free gift cards.
  • Upside: A leading gas station cashback app that rewards up to $0.15/gal back.
  • Ibotta: The most popular receipt scanning app to earn in-store cashback at well-known brands.
  • Amazon Shopper Panel: Earn free Amazon gift cards for uploading your receipts to Amazon.
  • NCP Mobile: A fun way to upload receipts and scan barcodes for money.

Some of these apps require you to activate the cashback before you finalize your purchase, so keep that in mind when trying them out.

10. Customer Chat Agent

If you enjoy assisting others and don’t mind chatting on the phone, you can easily apply to become a customer chat agent.

Chat agents help customers solve issues with their product or service by communicating through text. The average chat agent makes around $35-$40k per year while having options for part-time and flexible gigs.

Glassdoor chat agent salary

A few customer chat agent job sites that pay you to text and chat include:

  • Zapier
  • HelpFlow
  • ModSquad
  • Drip
  • WriterAccess
  • Upwork
  • ExecOnline
  • When I Work

If you’re having trouble finding more jobs in this field, try searching for other terms like “chat support jobs” or “customer success jobs” on Google to find job postings.

My post on the best work from home jobs that provide equipment also has some similar gigs you can consider.

11. Online Tutor

Now, most online tutoring jobs require teaching students from your computer and having a webcam. But, there are simpler platforms out there that let you work with your phone.

PalFish is a perfect example, and it pays you to teach English online with its iOS or Android app.

PalFish tutor

This is a great tutoring gig for college students or anyone looking for flexible, part-time work. And you get to feel good that you're helping other people learn English!

12. Mystery Shopper

Mystery shopping apps pay you for completing short tasks in your city. So, if you want to get paid to explore and collect data about local businesses, this is the right side hustle for you.

Several leading apps in this category include:

  • Gigwalk: Earn up to $100 by completing local mystery shopping tasks.
  • Premise: Get paid for taking photos, finding out prices, walking into stores, and more with Premise.
  • Field Agent: One of the highest paying apps in the mystery shopper space.
  • Shopkick: A rewards app that also has gigs like checking out stores and taking photos of products.

Of course, these side hustle apps won't make you rich. But you can easily make $5 to $20 per day just by completing easy, nearby gigs.

13. App Tester

User-testing gigs pay you to test apps and websites and then share your feedback. It's a pretty fun hustle, and you generally earn about $10 to $15 per short test you complete.

And if you want to work on your phone, you're in luck. With apps like PlaytestCloud, you can earn PayPal money by testing different apps and games that are in development. The app is free to sign up for, and it's one of my favorite user-testing gigs right now.

PlaytestCloud

You have to complete a qualification test to work with PlaytestCloud. But if you get approved, you get paid $9 for every 15 minute test you complete.

This is a fun way to make some quick money. And again, you get to make money with your phone while you test out different apps.

Extra Reading – How To Make Money In One Hour.

Tips For Getting Started

Now that you know some of the top side hustles using your phone, here are some tips that I've found useful over the years to help you make more money:

  1. Set Specific Goals: How much do you want to make with a phone side hustle? Different ideas have different income potential, so choose one that matches your goal.
  2. Have Fun: Many of these ideas are fun side hustles. So even if they don't make you a full-time income, you can still enjoy the process while testing out different ideas. And there are also plenty of money earning apps without investment, so there's no harm in trying a few.
  3. Test Several Hustles: Testing several phone side gigs is the best way to find out which ideas you like and also what's most lucrative.

Extra Reading – The Ultimate Side Hustle Database.

Final Thoughts

Technology really has made it easier to make money with your fingertips, and our phones are always on us. So, hopefully you found some of these best side hustles from your phone a great starting point.

And remember: you have so many options. It doesn't matter if it's Uber Eats or Instacart, or using cash survey sites like Branded Surveys; it's never been easier to make money thanks to the rise of side hustle apps.

Want even more money-making ideas? Checkout:

Tom is a full-time blogger and freelance writer with a passion for side hustling, passive income, and making money online. His work has appeared on dozens of personal finance websites like Money Crashers, The College Investor, Forbes, and more.

Tom also founded the blog This Online World - a finance site dedicated to helping people make money online - in 2018. After 6 years, that site merged with WebMonkey, with the goal of helping even more people earn their first dollar of online income.

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